


and that's the thing about illicit affairs

by thisismetrying



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Addiction, Affairs, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Canon Compliant, Cheating, F/M, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, I'm so so sorry, Infidelity, Post-Canon, Smut, Toxic Relationship, basically they are self sabotaging assholes in this but i still love them, but mostly hurt if i'm being honest, honestly this kind of went off the rails, if i had to use four words to describe beth and benny in this its: toxic chaotic horny assholes, they are not great people in this, this is my first time writing smut i'm sorry, very little editing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 00:27:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29126463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisismetrying/pseuds/thisismetrying
Summary: This thing with Benny is like a game. But they’ve always been good at games, have always been playing some sort of game. Sometimes, Beth thinks it’s a game of cat and mouse. But then she doesn’t know who is who and sometimes she thinks they’re both both and she can’t unravel them in her head.Maybe that’s why she keeps going back to him. She can never untie where she ends and where he begins, not really.Sometimes, she thinks if she thought about it too much, she could spend the rest of her life trying to untangle them.
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts, Harry Beltik/Beth Harmon
Comments: 25
Kudos: 74





	1. look at this godforsaken mess that you made me

**Author's Note:**

> title and beginning and end lyrics in italics from Taylor Swift's "illicit affairs"

_And that’s the thing about illicit affairs_

_And clandestine meetings_

_And longing stares_

-

“Oh, god, please, don’t stop.”

Beth’s cries sound throughout the room. She rests her head against the mirror, red lipstick clad mouth forming the most beautiful “O” shape. She grasps at the ceramic of the sink beneath her, trying to find something to ground her from this floating feeling.

Benny pushes his languid pace, thrusting in and out of, circling his hips, peppering her neck with kisses. God, he’ll never be able to get enough, he thinks.

“Fuck, yes,” he says.

She lifts her hands from their place on the sink and winds them into his sandy hair, pulling him into a searing kiss.

 _So good,_ he thinks. He’s not going to last much longer.

He snakes a hand down in between their bodies, under her skirt, to where they’re joined and finds her sweet spot.

She rocks her hand against him and then the next second, she’s splintering, shattering. And then he’s following behind her, coming to his own climax and they’re clinging onto each other.

_“Fuck.”_

-

For a moment, while they’re still coming down from their highs, they stay like that, connected. Beth’s hands are wrapped around Benny’s neck, Benny’s hands are clutching her back in a vice grip. They breath heavily into the other, both eyes closed, foreheads resting against each other.

And then the moment is over. Benny slips out of her and goes to discard the condom. Beth hops down from the sink and flips her skirt down and goes to grab some paper towels to clean herself up. She turns around toward the mirror to fix her hair back into its headband.

After a few minutes, Beth’s skirt and shirt are back on perfectly and her hair is neatly tied back. Benny’s pants are zipped and his cowboy hat sits at just the right angle on his head, with his finger-combed hair hidden beneath it.

“I’ll leave first, this time,” Benny says, his voice dropping. Beth looks at him from the reflection of the mirror. She nods.

He puts his hand on the door, and then pauses, almost as if he wants to say something. But then the moment, like all their moments, passes, and he yanks the door open and leaves.

Beth looks down at her watch, the watch her mother gave her that she still wears. Seven minutes. She’ll wait seven minutes before leaving. Before heading back to the main lobby, before heading back to the tournament, before heading back to the tables set up with chess boards.

Before heading back to her husband.

Who is _not_ the man who just fucked her.

-

After Beth had returned from Moscow in 1968, things had been…surprisingly ordinary. Sure, there was the heckling that her CIA agent had given her after she’d fled the car to go play chess in a park and there had been the Washington D.C. stop on the way back, where she’d posed for a photo with the president, and there had, of course, been an influx of invitations to tournaments and invitationals and press interviews.

But after D.C., when she’d returned home to her house in Lexington, besides the build-up of mail and the non-stop phone ringing with a reporter or a tournament director, things had been surprisingly ordinary.

She’d taken the phone off the hook after the first few days and only reattached it a week later, and the calls had lessened by then (they were still rather frequent though). She’d gone grocery shopping and she’d hired the neighbor kid to mow the lawn again. She’d written a check to Jolene and sent it in the mail (she would have given it to her in person, if she could drive). She’d called Jolene and thanked her. Called up all the boys too, and thanked them. The conversations had been short and sweet, if a little stilted.

Jolene had told her that she’d be visiting sometime soon and wanted to hear all about it. She’d also asked point blank if she’d stayed off the pills and the booze, and Beth had responded affirmatively. Jolene seemed satisfied with that and told her she had to go, had to go see her boss/lover.

Matt and Mike had been overjoyed to hear from her and reiterated how proud they were of her. They also recounted the trip down to New York, how it all came about (from what she could tell, Benny had been the main organizer of it), and how they’d have to come by soon. Of course, they were both very busy with college but they’d come as soon as they had a break.

Harry had sounded a little surprised to hear from her, but smoothed it over and asked polite questions about the game and her well-being. He promised he’d come by soon. She agreed and said that that would be nice.

And Benny…well, Benny had been Benny. He kept his tone carefully neutral throughout the whole conversation, mainly asking her questions about the specifics of her game with Borgov. He did call her last few moves “brilliant.” She’d thanked him, although she didn’t specify for what. He asked her when she would start training for the world championship and she’d said she didn’t know. He told her that whenever she did start, she could come to New York and they could pick up their training again. She’d said she had to think about it, but thank you.

And that had been that.

-

Jolene did come by and Beth did tell her all about Moscow, all about the food and the sights, and all about the games, and all about how the boys had come to help her.

“So that cowboy cracker really got together a whole team, just for you?” Jolene asked. “Including your past boyfriend?”

“Harry wasn’t really a boyfriend. And I think the whole team thing has always been part of Benny’s fantasy,” Beth answered.

“Hmmm,” Jolene had said, but she hadn’t elaborated.

The twins had come by, and they brought Townes with them as well. Townes, who was now getting assignments all over the country, due to his coverage of Beth’s win in Moscow.

They all played a couple of games, just for fun (knowing Beth would beat them all handily), and ate spaghetti and meatballs and it was good.

Harry comes around and he brings groceries from the grocery store he works at, smiling down at his shoes when he finds out Beth is doing just fine and has, in fact, been keeping her fridge stocked with groceries and not booze.

They don’t play chess, but they do sit and listen to music companionably before Harry leaves.

He comes back the next week and the next week, and the week after that, and the company is nice.

-

Beth plays a few tournaments here and there (mainly for the money), but she largely retreats to studying, sharpening her skills for the inevitable match for the World Championship against Borgov in two years.

Eventually, the papers and the invitational directors get the idea that she’s not in it for the flash, and while her mailbox never stops being full, the constant calls stop and she is left in relative peace.

The thing about peace, is that it is boring. The quiet, the peace, the stillness that comes to envelope her, scratches at her, bugging her.

It’s not that she wants to go wild, go crazy like in Paris again, but this _non-motion_ bothers her.

Everyone else seems to be moving.

Jolene starts law school and quits her job at the law firm (she still carries on with her ex-boss, though).

  
The twins continue college and start to talk about becoming teachers and running chess clubs for kids. They call and talk to Beth all about their ideas, getting her feedback, her input.

Townes gets more assignments that take him all over the world. He sends postcards, sometimes.

Benny seems to be entering more and more tournaments these days, having seemingly gone back on his word that entering into more tournaments can only hurt him. From the rankings Beth checks frequently, it seems it’s only helping him.

(She considers going to New York with Benny, but then thinks of his disinterested tone on the phone and how much unsaid there is between them and she doesn’t want to _deal_ with that now.)

And Harry graduates college and gets a job as an electrical engineer. But he still comes by, almost weekly, and he cooks for Beth and she tells him about what games she’s studying now, what new flaws she’s found in the grandmaster games, what new openings she’s thinking up. He listens earnestly, commenting sometimes, but mostly listening.

Then, one day in spring, they’re sitting in the backyard at a table and he kisses her again. She’s not ready for it, doesn’t expect it, but she takes a minute to compose herself and tells him to do it again.

It’s circular, but it’s still _motion_.

-

And when Harry proposes in the summer, she says yes because she is tired of the peace, is tired of the inertia, and thinks that, if anything, this will bring _something_ to her life, disturb the monotony of it.

-

“I still can’t believe you married Beltik,” Benny pants out as he enters her from behind.

She closes her eyes and rests her head on his shoulder. God, she loves this feeling, him inside her, the stretch of him, the weight of him. “Well, he proposed,” she says, as if that answers everything.

He reaches up to cup her breast, tweaking her hard nipple. _Fuck._ She needs to even the playing field. She reaches back to cup his balls and he stills for a moment before pounding into her with a new vigor.

“Any sucker can propose,” Benny says as he bottoms out in her. Beth’s eyes roll to the back of her head. Her other hand goes to his hair, twisting the loose strands in it.

 _What is she supposed to say to that?_ She thinks. The thought evaporates from her mind with a particularly hard thrust.

“Would you say yes to any sucker, Beth?” Benny whispers against her ear, his lips ghosting against the skin.

She doesn’t dignify that with an answer, instead just clenches around him. She can’t see him but she feels the obvious effect as he pushes against her harder.

“Would you have said yes, if I asked?” Benny asks, his voice a low, seductive tone.

She rolls her hips against his, taking him in deeper. “No,” she answers honestly. Her voice is hoarse. She’s about to list off all the reasons why when he moves his hand down her body and then he’s touching her clit and _fuck._

“Well, I wouldn’t have asked,” he says. She’s so close and she just needs, just needs him, moving with her.

“Yes, yes,” she chants. “Almost there.”

Benny’s speed picks up even more, both his thrusts and his fingers, and soon they’re both tumbling over.

-

Beth didn’t start out her marriage _planning_ to cheat on Harry. She really, really didn’t.

Oh, sure, she had known that she really didn’t feel more than a fond affection for him, but she didn’t think she’d cheat on him.

She’d married Harry at the courthouse in the winter and things had been alright for a couple of months. He’d moved into the house with her.

She’d mainly stuck to playing local tournaments in the winter, so she didn’t have to travel much. And then it’d been the spring time and the weather was nice and it was a good time to travel for tournaments (plus, the prize money was always better in the nicer months, with more people willing to travel and pay the entry fees).

Harry had accompanied her to the first few out-of-state ones she’d played.

And of course, at the very first non-Kentucky tournament she’d played, in Chicago, Benny Watts had been there.

When she’d see his cowboy hat that seemed to be a perpetual fixture on his head (Beth really didn’t know why, she quite preferred him without it), she thought she might sink into the carpet of the hotel lobby. Of course, that wasn’t actually an option.

And before she could turn her and Harry around, to the elevators, to their room, to anywhere else, he was striding over to them, trench coat flapping behind him.

“Why, hello,” he’d said in that usual, smooth as butter tone of voice, with a nod to both of them. “Harry,” he’d said. “Beth,” he’d said. And then, “Or should I say Mrs. Beltik?”

She could have punched him right then and there, with the way his eyes danced, the way he had just the hint of a smirk on his lips.

“My congratulations are in order. Sorry I didn’t make the wedding,” he remarked, as if he had been invited (as if anyone had been invited).

Harry, being the good soul that he is, had smiled, showing his straightened teeth, and said graciously, “Thank you, Benny.”

Benny’s eyes focused on her, expectantly. Her move. 

“It’s still Harmon,” she gritted out. “I kept my last name.” She felt a pulse between her head, a migraine coming on.

“Of course you did,” he said, good-naturedly. This just made Beth want to punch him more. She almost felt like a kid, wanted to challenge him to a fist fight right then, right there in the very hotel lobby. _Why is he like this?_ she thought miserably.

Before she got the chance to challenge him or ask him, he’d been gone with a tip of his stupid cowboy hat.

-

When Benny had read the announcement in _Chess Review_ , he’d been shocked, to say the least.

The magazine didn’t usually trade in gossip and social affairs, usually sticking to game strategy, but when the (all bets on) soon-to-be World Champion got married to the former Kentucky State Champion, the magazine couldn’t resist putting in a little human interest piece. Nothing fancy or flashy, just a paragraph at the back of the magazine (which Benny always read cover to cover). There were no pictures (though no one could say whether this was for the lack of interest or the lack of response on behalf of the couple).

He’d known that Beth and Beltik had had a _thing_ , before the 1967 World Championship, when Beltik had trained her. Beth had never told him, but Beltik had admitted it when they’d all gathered in Benny’s concrete box of an apartment to help Beth in Moscow.

While he had had a searing flash of jealousy at the time, he had figured that it wasn’t all that memorable from Beth’s perspective, given her “so that’s what it’s supposed to feel like,” comment after their first time. From their subsequent couplings, Benny had also taken it that Harry had never gone down on her, had never fucked her senseless, hell, had never even fingered her. From what he could gather, it had never really progressed beyond a few unfulfilling pumps.

_So why did Beth marry him?_

But he’d quickly shaken his head of those thoughts. It wasn’t really any of his business. Beth and him were friends, nothing more. Although they had had satisfying (okay, more than satisfying) times in bed together, he had closed that door when he’d angrily told her to not call anymore.

And yes, he’d called in Moscow and they’d spoken a few times since then, but it was only ever related to strategy. Never anything else. Never even their own chess games.

So he’d brushed it aside and focused on his next tournament.

-

Sometimes, she gets so distracted by Benny during matches, she’ll almost make a mistake.

She notices the way his hair looks, a lock falling over one eye and she can’t help thinking of the way the strands brush against her nipples as he’s kissing her way down her torso. She notices the way his fingers stretch out over the pieces before ever so carefully selecting one and she can’t help thinking of how those same fingers so carefully touch and curl inside her. She notices the way his mouth slightly parts just before he punches his clock and she can’t help thinking of the way his mouth parts against her folds, licking and sucking _just_ right.

He’ll be the ruin of her.

-

The first time it happened was the first time Harry didn’t accompany her to a tournament.

Usually, he took the time off work to go, if the tournaments happened during the week. If they happened on the weekend, all the better. The perks of a 9-5 job, Beth had guessed.

But then she had planned for a tournament in Seattle and Harry had a last minute work trip. He’d played the dutiful husband and offered to cancel, but she’d told him to go, she’d be fine, she’d been going to tournaments for years at this point. She’s a big girl, a queen not a pawn; she could handle herself. Harry had laughed and agreed.

So she went alone.

She really, really didn’t mean for it to happen.

But then she was at the hotel and the games for the day were done. She’d found, without Harry there, she was lonely. So she’d gone down to the lobby, figuring she’d find some old acquaintances to catch up with, maybe play a few rounds for fun with.

As it would happen, a bunch of players had been playing speed chess. Of course, Benny Watts was at the center of it all. The competitive side of her couldn’t help but walk up.

“Five dollars a game?” she’d said, already seating herself in front of Benny.

They’d played. They’d played and played and played, the energy between them crackling, and soon enough the whole room had stopped their own games just to spectate theirs. They played faster and faster, building a tempo up, at one point handing the same five dollar bill back and forth.

Maybe it was the crowd or maybe it was the way each’s eyes lit up, following the others fingers across the board, watching their every move like a jealous lover. But the room got hotter.

And then the hotel café staff had started to make pointed noises and gestures towards the “closed” sign that had been put up over an hour ago and the crowd reluctantly dispersed.

But the last game had ended in a draw and neither was satisfied with the resulted. Benny suggested finishing it in his room.

The elevator ride up was painful. The elevator was small, forcing them to stand side by side, the sides of their hands touching. Both were hyper-aware of the crackle in the air, the crackle that never really seems to leave between them, and they both get lost in thought about the next move, and they both felt as if they might suffocate.

When they’d entered Benny’s room, they’d gotten as far as setting up the board before they were on each other, kissing and pulling and pushing, and devouring each other, as if they were still on fire, and the other was a body of water.

It only made the fire burn brighter. 

-

Sometimes, he gets so distracted by Beth that he’ll make a move that shortens the game. If he had played a different move, if he wasn’t so damned distracted by her, he could have held her off for at least another ten moves.

He looks at her hands, fluttering over the pieces and he thinks of the way they pull at his hair as he’s pushing into her. He looks at her shirt which reveals just enough when he’s sitting straight across from her and she’s leaning across the table and he thinks of the way her breasts fit perfectly in his hands, her rosy nipples so responsive to his touch. He looks at her putting her hand on her neck when she’s contemplating a move and he thinks of the way her hands grasp around his neck, holding on for dear life when he fucks her senseless against a wall, until she’s a mess, sobbing his name.

She’ll be the ruin of him.

-

“We should stop,” Beth says, putting on her bra.

They’d just fucked in his hotel room, _again._ This time, they’re in Seattle at a week-long tournament. And this isn’t the first time this week. In fact, sometimes Beth wonders why she even pays for a separate hotel room anymore.

Benny is reclining in bed, still naked as the day he was born. His hands are behind his head and he looks like a king surveying his kingdom. She wishes she could wipe that smug smirk off his face.

“Okay,” he says, nonchalantly. He flexes his fingers and a shiver runs through Beth, reminded of what those fingers were doing just minutes before.

“Okay,” she says, finishes dressing, and leaves the room, for what she vows will be the last time.

-

Beth tells Jolene. Of course she does, she’s her best friend, the closest thing to a sister she has.

Jolene listens patiently.

Beth figures that Jolene will empathize, will tell her it’s okay. After all, Jolene is seeing her married ex-boss.

But if Beth came to Jolene to be comforted, to be reassured, she doesn’t get that.

Jolene is surprisingly recalcitrant, telling Beth plainly that she doesn’t think it’s a good idea for her to keep fucking Benny. Says it seems too messy.

“The difference,” Jolene declares, “is that I know exactly what I want and don’t want from my man.”

Beth goes to open her mouth, to respond, but Jolene continues.

“I think you haven’t got a clue what’s between you and that pirate,” she says. “So best keep it simple for now, until you do. And don’t forget that poor boy you’re married too. Though I have opinions on that too, that you didn’t ask for.”

Beth ignores the part about Harry. “What if it’s already not simple? Like, it’s complicated?” she asks.

“Then uncomplicate it.”

Beth says she’ll take the advice into consideration.

-

“What do you see in him, again?” Benny asks, scrutinizing a wallet-sized picture of her and Harry that’s been left out.

They’re in Beth’s hotel room in Austin. Benny is lounging lazily in an armchair, cowboy hat and trench coat on, despite the heat. Beth is in the bathroom, putting on makeup.

He’d just arrived to the tournament, but he’d come straight to Beth’s room. She’d been getting ready for a dinner engagement hosted by the Federation. She hadn’t exactly invited him into stay, but he’d made himself at home anyway. He’d sat down to study the board Beth currently had set up, but his eyes had roamed to the picture instead.

“I’m not talking about this with you,” she says, her voice clear from the tiny hotel bathroom.

“Shame,” he says, his voice drawling. “And here I just wanted to know your thoughts about the new Chess Federation president, who you seem to have been buddying up to, given all your new dinner invitations,”

Beth walks out of the bathroom and looks him straight in the eye, her gaze sharp. “You weren’t asking about Mr. Landscomb,” she says.

Benny shrugs. Of course he wasn’t.

“Besides, I know for a fact that you were invited to this dinner too, but you didn’t RSVP in time,” she continues.

“Fancy dinners aren’t really my thing,” he says drily. He looks her up and down. “And I don’t think they’re really yours either.”

Beth crosses her arms. “I like getting dressed up.”

“You’ve never needed a fancy dinner as a reason to get dressed up,” he remarks. She doesn’t deny it.

She turns to go back to the bathroom.

He mutters, “Good thing you’ve got a trapped pawn to follow you around everywhere.”

She whips around. “Harry is _stable,_ ” she says. “Harry is nice.” Ironically, venom laces her voice.

“Yes, sounds perfect,” he says. “For a pet. Not sure about a husband.” He doesn’t know why he’s doing this, why he’s saying this. It’s not particularly fun, not for him, and not for Beth, who he sees has guilt and fury written all over her face.

She quickly recovers. “And you’re such an expert on marriage?” she retorts back.

If it’s meant to sting him, by all appearances it falls flat. “Just thought you were more passionate than that, Harmon,” he says, his eyes glinting.

She marches over and shows him _passion._

-

When Jolene had described her encounters with her (ex-)boss, Beth hadn’t really gotten it, didn’t see what the fuss was about. Why Jolene made it seem like the fact that they were sneaking around made it all that more thrilling, made the sex even better.

She gets it now. Or, at least, she thinks she does. Sometimes she doesn’t, thinks that it would be this way with Benny anyway.

This _thing_ with Benny is like a game. But they’ve always been good at games, have always been playing some sort of game. Sometimes, Beth thinks it’s a game of cat and mouse. But then she doesn’t know who is who and sometimes she thinks they’re both both and she can’t unravel them in her head.

Sometimes, she thinks it’s just another game of chess for them, each plotting out their moves, trying to undo the other. But that doesn’t make sense, because she can hardly think when she’s with Benny, nevertheless plot out precise moves for his demise.

Maybe it’s like speed chess. A flurry of moves, hardly any thoughts involved, all instinct and no long-term strategy.

Maybe that’s why she keeps going back to him. She can never untie where she ends and where he begins, not really.

Sometimes, she thinks if she thought about it too much, she could spend the rest of her life trying to untangle them.

-

“Okay, we really need to stop,” Beth says. They’re half undressed already on her queen-size hotel room bed, the scratchy hotel comforter already kicked to the floor.

Benny pulls away from kissing her, looking her square in the eye. “Why, afraid you’re breaking poor Beltik’s heart?”

“No,” she says. She looks away from him. “I doubt he knows.”

Benny’s face flickers with confusion. “Then why?”

“Because it’s wrong,” she says. “And it’s complicated.” Jolene’s words echo in her mind.

“Alright,” he says, reluctantly, and goes to sit up. Beth immediately feels the warmth of his chest leave hers and her hand reaches out to grasp his wrist.

He looks down at her.

“We should stop after today,” she says, quietly.

“Really?” Benny says, already lowering himself back down to her, burying his face in her neck. He starts to slowly kiss and suck. “Because we can stop right now,” he says, although his actions tell a different story.

And then he sucks right at that spot on her neck and his fingers reach into her panties and _fuck, how is he always so good at this,_ and she tells herself that they’re already in the middlegame, no need for an adjournment. “After,” she pants. “After, this.” They’ll stop after today. She promises herself.

Then, he’s traveling down her body, his kisses leaving a searing trail in their wake, a pawn with the intent to queen.

And when Benny’s tongue swipes against her, all thoughts of right and wrong stop and there is only Benny, Benny, always Benny.

-

“So, why didn’t Beltik come as your second?” Benny asks as he lounges on the chaise in the Parisian suite. He lights a cigarette and rests his boots on the plush velvet.

Beth is busy unpacking her dresses. She’s meticulously planned an outfit for each day of play.

“You’re my friend,” she says, lamely.

He quirks an eyebrow up at her and lets out a puff of smoke.

“You’re the next best in the U.S.,” she amends. “Besides, Harry had work.”

“Hmmm. And I suppose he didn’t offer to take off?” Benny asks with a smile. Beth thinks she should knock that stupid hat and his stupid smirk right off him.

“He did,” she admits, instead. “He’s a good man,” she says quietly.

She goes over to him, holding a lingerie set she’s just taken out of her suitcase.

Benny’s eyes darken. “Well, I’m honored to be your _friend.”_

They ignore the elephant in the room. No, they’re not exactly friends. Maybe, in another life where they both make better choices, they could be friends, the best of friends. But in this life, they are decidedly not _friends._

Friends don’t kiss each other the way they do, all teeth and tongue and fighting. Friends don’t fall to their knees and suck and lick like they do. Friends don’t know how the other tastes. Friends don’t play chess like they want to strangle the other and then take them to bed. 

-

Beth doesn’t know how to categorize Benny.

He’s not a friend. He’s not an enemy. He’s a sometimes opponent, she assumes. But even still, with all the matches internationally she’s been playing lately, she supposes on a professional front, they’re more a team.

He’s not a lover.

Lover is too intimate a word for what they do.

But fucking also doesn’t seem right.

Sure, they fuck. But sometimes, what they do is more intimate than that.

He comes as her second and they sit and analyze game after game of European grandmasters. But it doesn’t feel like teamwork. It feels like having a conversation with yourself.

It’s like playing yourself, playing with yourself (in more ways than one), it’s the way they (sometimes literally) become one. 

It’s the way they play each other like they’re playing for the goddamn world championship every single time. Winning and losing and winning and losing.

-

At the World Championship, Benny is Beth’s second.

It takes place in Oslo and every news outlet that’s remotely interested in chess is there to cover it.

Harry is there, of course, too, because even though he hasn’t come to a non-local tournament in a while, this is the biggest match of her life, so of course he’s there.

Of course, this means that there is no sneaking into rooms, no trysts in bathrooms, no mouthed “meet me in five” across the room. Not with Harry here, not with this much press here.

But they still spend an enormous amount of time together. They’re constantly in her (and Harry’s) room, going over Borgov’s latest moves, anticipating what he’ll do, what options Beth has.

Beth tries to ignore the way he hovers over her as he goes to move a piece on the board. Benny tries to ignore how her knuckles brush his arm as she goes to massage her neck.

(Harry tries to ignore the feeling that he’s intruding on something).

The twenty-four games are brutal and Beth thinks it might be the hardest thing she’s ever done, but she pulls it out and she wins, _she wins,_ and she is World Champion.

-

They celebrate, because you only become World Champion (at least for the first time) once. And the papers and all the chess aficionados who flew just to see the match of a lifetime all offer to buy her and her party drinks. While at first, she admirably declines, as the night wears on, she gets tired of having to smile, of having to play nice, of having to hold Harry’s hand, of having to be in the spotlight and answer all the insipid questions about her gender and her marriage, sprinkled in with a few questions here and there about chess.

So, when neither Harry or Benny are looking, she accepts one of the proffered drinks. And then another, and another. And another.

And soon, she is drunk, absolutely wasted, and she doesn’t know where she is, or who she is, or what she’s doing.

She wakes up in a soft down bed that smells vaguely familiar and with a splitting headache.

The curtains are drawn but a sliver of light still shines through them and she throws up her hand to block it.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” a familiar male voice says.

She blinks her eyes open and it takes a moment for them to focus but she sees Benny in front of the bed, a cup of coffee in hands.

_Shit. How did she get here? What happened? Did they fuck?_

Benny seems to read her mind. He always was good at reading her.

He sighs. “You drank last night, Harmon. And got plastered. Showed up at my room at four a.m.” He hands her the coffee. “Don’t worry, I called Beltik. Told him where you were. Apparently he left the party early and was fast asleep. Didn’t even know you were gone,” he says, one of his signature smirks appearing.

“Ah,” Beth says. God, her head _hurts_. She hasn’t felt like this in…well, in a long time.

Beth looks down and sees she’s dressed in a robe. One of Benny’s by the looks of it. It’s slightly open, revealing her chest.

“Did we ah,” she starts.

“Fuck?” he asks, reading her again. He shakes his head. “No. You had spilled a drink all over yourself and were determined to get out of the wet clothes.”

 _Makes sense._ She guesses. She really doesn’t know what to think. How did she get here again?

“You’ve got an interview in a few hours,” he remarks.

She shoots him a look. An interview is the _last_ thing on her mind. “Thanks,” she says dryly.

“Just doing my job as your _second,_ ” he says, almost cheerfully.

She goes to get out of the bed. While doing so, the tie on the robe slips open. She goes to retie it.

Benny scoffs. “Don’t bother. It’s not like I haven’t seen it all already.”

And he’s right. He’s explored every inch of her body, every little spot that gives her pleasure. Hell, he probably has a map of her body in his mind.

Still, she draws the robe tighter.

-

As terrible as it is, Harry is her safety plan. The one she can always run to, always go back to.

And that’s what she does after her night in Oslo.

She runs back to him and she apologizes and swears never to do it again. And he forgives her because he loves her and because he is a good man.

Benny could never be that for her.

-

She loves Harry. She doesn’t love Benny.

She loves Harry in the way you love your childhood home (not that she really knows what that is, but she has the house in Lexington and that’s close enough). She loves Harry in the way you love a warm cup of tea, comforting enough to ease the stress of the moment away, if just for a moment. She loves Harry the way an orphan whose father wouldn’t take her and whose mother drove into a bridge can love. She loves his stability and that he loves her. She needs that.

She knows she’s not _in love_ with him. She doesn’t know if she knows what being _in love_ feels like. But she knows she loves Harry. She needs Harry.

Benny is like one of those new skyscrapers, tall and dark and full of secrets, always another room, another apartment to go into, another level to find out. Benny is like the first shot of tequila, he floods your veins and makes you dizzy and breathless and your throat burn, putting you on edge for what’s to come next. Loving Benny is something a broken person would do.

When they’d first started fucking, or started fucking after she’d gone and married Harry, she’d been a little worried that Benny was in love with her. Worried that he was too attached to her.

But then she’d seen it for what it was. Benny wasn’t in love with her. She wasn’t in love with him. They simply, got each other. And to get someone else, to know someone else like that, to be that close to someone, well, it only made sense that they’d also be as physically close as possible.

At least, that’s what she tells herself. When the sting of guilt eats at her stomach and she can’t breathe and she feels like she’s stuck in quicksand.

-

Beth’s promise of sobriety doesn’t last long.

At the very next tournament, she joins her gaggle of admirers who are always offering to buy her drinks and takes them up on it.

She doesn’t get drunk, but she does drink and it is only a slippery slope from there.

-

Benny can be cruel sometimes. He knows this.

So when Beth comes to his hotel room the next day, after he’d seen her surrounded by groupies and drinking at the hotel bar, he doesn’t bother trying to stuff his mean streak down.

“The addict come to get another fix?” he asks, the sneer in his voice apparent.

“Oh, screw you Benny,” Beth says, shifting on her feet.

Benny folds his arms. “I think that’s exactly what you want,” he says, suggestively looking her up and down.

Beth similarly folds her arms. “Why didn’t you stop me last night? You always seemed to have a penchant for that.”

Benny doesn’t move, though his face flinches just a little. “I’m not your keeper Beth. I’ve tried enough times to save you from yourself.”

This seemingly infuriates her. She stomps her foot down, almost like a little kid. “Fuck you Benny. No, seriously, Benny, fuck you!” She raises her voice. She shouldn’t really, but she’s the fucking World Champion and she’ll do what she wants and she’s not going to let _Benny Watts_ tell her anything. “I don’t need a keeper and I don’t need you, or anyone, to save me from anything.”

He knows he’s done it now, pissed off Beth so that she’ll end up running, but he can’t help but get one more jab in. “Isn’t that what you married Beltik for? To be your little keeper?”

She flees.

-

She flees and he flees, and for a few months it stays like that. But then they catch each other again in London.

There are “I’m sorrys” and “I shouldn’t have said thats” and neither are really sure they mean it (they are both always so good at reading each other, except when it comes to feelings) but in the end it doesn’t matter.

It ends with them in some supply closet of the hotel they’re at, during the lunchbreak. Beth’s on her knees, taking him into her mouth, swirling her tongue around him.

“Fuck, yes. Just like that,” Benny says. _God, how is she so good at this?_ he thinks, and then finds he doesn’t want to think about that.

She smiles from her position, her smile a sweet saccharine laced with something more poisonous. “Do you like that?”

He pulls at her hair. “What do you think?”

“Tell me,” she commands. “Tell me how much you like it.” She likes this, being in control, being in charge of Benny, of his pleasure.

“Fuck. I love it. I love it. Your mouth feels so good around me,” he pants. He’s so close and every single word out of his mouth is true.

She decides to take mercy on him and finishes him off.

-

Sometimes, his feelings for Beth absolutely terrify him.

He can’t keep focus around her. He, Benny Watts, U.S. Champion (or so he was, once upon a time), child prodigy, one of the best U.S. players ever, can’t keep his focus around Beth Harmon. He prides himself on his focus, on his ability to isolate everything but the chess board. But he can’t with Beth Harmon.

He feels like he’s riding a wave with her. It’s a monstrous wave, a tsunami, but he’s never quite sure how high it’ll get or where it’ll end. Like the wave could go on forever or it could stop abruptly at any time.

He can’t get her out of his mind, can’t take her and place in her in a separate little box, like he does with so many other aspects of his life. Can’t dig her out from underneath his skin.

-

Beth continues to drink, and sometimes she gets drunk and Benny doesn’t interfere and Harry is worried.

But she continues because she is Beth Harmon and she has taken her mother’s words to heart. She blows by and goes on and does what the hell she feels like.


	2. you know damn well, for you i would ruin myself a million little times

“I’m going to tell Harry.”

Benny looks up from his _Chess Review._ He’s been lounging on the bed, shirtless, in the aftermath of their coupling _._ Beth rarely, if ever, says something that he doesn’t know exactly what it means, what she means or that surprises him. But this does.

“Tell him what?” he asks, his interest piqued.

“Everything,” she shrugs. “Us,” she clarifies.

 _Interesting,_ Benny thinks, though his heart starts to hammer in his chest. Out loud, he asks: “And what do you think he’ll do?”

“I don’t know.” She says. “But this will have to stop.” And then, they are back on familiar ground, because he sees what she’s doing.

“So you’re going to tell Beltik because you don’t have the self-control to not jump my bones every time you see me?”

Beth huffs. She fixes her dress in the mirror. “It’s not _every_ time.”

“Near every time, then,” he clarifies. Since London, he’s pretty sure it’s been every time, but he doesn’t care for the fine points in this argument.

“I’m telling him because it’s the right thing to do.” She huffs. “Harry deserves better.”

“Sure he does,” he says easily, casually. He quirks an eyebrow up. “But can you give it to him?”

-

Sometimes, her feelings for Benny terrify her.

She is absolutely out of control around him, like she can’t even think. It’s a different feeling than she used to get when she popped tranquilizers.

That feeling was calming, focusing, serene.

This feeling is wild, feral, raw, like something claws at her chest and she doesn’t know what quite to make of it. Like she’s in a car and she can’t drive and she can’t slow it down and she is careening into something, fast.

It’s not just that she has an overwhelming urge to disrobe him practically every time she sees him, it’s not just that she loves every second he’s inside her, rocking into her and hitting _that_ spot right there, again and again (though she does love it), it’s that she feels like he’s inside of her every minute of every day. Like he knows exactly what she’s thinking, exactly what she’ll do.

When she’s with Benny, she doesn’t feel like her own person.

-

With Harry, it’s different.

She has never had trouble telling herself apart from Harry, never had trouble putting distance between them. Maybe too much difference.

Poor, sweet Harry she thinks.

Sometimes, she regrets marrying him, regrets he ever asked. But then she thinks of that inertia, that loneliness that had settled on her after she came back from Moscow and she doesn’t think she could ever bear that again.

And she tries her best with Harry, she really does. She buys him nice gifts and she talks with him, pretends to be interested in his engineering work (most of the time) even though she usually plays games in her head while he’s talking, and she tries to support him.

She tries. She tries so hard, she thinks.

She even taught him to touch her.

It took a while, and it still is a slow-going process, she still has to instruct him every time, almost like going through the moves of a game with a beginning. Beth finds it boring and a chore most of the time, but she tries, for Harry’s sake.

(She can’t help but compare it with Benny. With Benn, he knows her body well, almost too well for her comfort. He knows exactly where to touch and lick and suck to get her off, to make her shiver and quiver with pleasure, what to do to draw it out)

And it’s not just in the bedroom that he knows how to do this. He can do it just as well in conversation when they’re fully clothed and in front of an audience as well as he can do it in the privacy of a hotel room. He can push every button, pull every lever to get her going, to figure her out, to stimulate her mind and body.)

-

“ _Ohhhhh yes, Ben, doooon’ttt stop,”_ the blonde underneath him cries out. He stills for a second but then continues.

He can’t really be mad at her for not knowing her name because he really can’t remember hers either. _Jenny? Jessica? Jane?_

He continues thrusting and the blonde continues to moan with pleasure, a little too theatrically for his taste, if he’s being honest.

He’ll do this, sometimes, go out to a bar and have a few drinks and bring back someone who indicates they want to forget just as much as he does. Blondes, brunettes, girls with hair dyed neon colors. Never redheads, though.

Often, he’ll do this after a particularly nasty row with Beth or after a particularly frustrating match, if only to remind himself that he can.

It’s not like he and Beth are exclusive. She’s _fucking married_ , for Christ’s sake. And he’s always careful, anyway, always uses condoms. And he’s always up front with the women he takes home. That it’s just sex and that’s all it’ll ever be. And with them, he’s not even lying.

When he and Beth tell that to each other, it doesn’t quite feel the same.

-

With Beth, it’s different.

It’s different because after they fuck, after they play, hell, after he just sees her, he feels like she’s all over him, and no number of showers could ever wash her from him.

Not that he knows if he wants to or not. Sometimes, he just wants to bask in the dirty filthiness that is their relationship.

-

“You’re staying at Benny’s again?” Harry asks, his guileless tone activating the guilt that seems to permanently live in her stomach.

“Yes, why?” she asks. There’s no need to pay for a hotel. She tells herself it’s not suspicious. Plenty of times chess players crash at their friends’ places if they have a place in the area. She’d be doing it even if she _weren’t_ fucking Benny.

As it was, whenever she stays over at Benny’s, she’s pretty sure that any waking moment that’s not occupied with chess is occupied with sex. Sometimes both. They start to meld together with Benny, anyway.

“Oh, I was just thinking…I could come with you this time,” Harry says. He looks up at her with sheepish eyes. “If you want, that is.”

She closes her eyes. No, she doesn’t really want, but she doesn’t have a good reason to say no. Just like she didn’t when she’d agreed to marry him.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll book a hotel room.”

-

Benny doesn’t know how Cleo knows, but she knows. She’s always had an uncanny ability for those things.

Beth and Harry had been in New York and they had met up for dinner, and at the last minute Cleo had shown up at his place, so he’d brought her along, thinking “What could go wrong?”

Dinner hadn’t been terribly awkward. Or, at least, it could have been worse. He suspects Beltik knows he’s fucking his wife, but doesn’t have the balls to confront him or Beth. Or hell, maybe Beth made good on her promise and told Harry.

But he hadn’t had his lights punched out yet (though he’s not sure what he would expect of Harry Beltik. He doesn’t really take him as the swinging type).

But Cleo, Cleo definitely knows. Maybe it’s the way Beth’s perfume lingers in his apartment, or the pair of panties Beth had carelessly left that are still on his bedroom floor. (She was supposed to stay with him, until Harry had decided he would come along. As it happens, she’s made quick trips to his apartment the entire trip). Or maybe Cleo is just that intuitive.

“So, you are still fucking ‘er?” Cleo asks in her lilting French accent, lighting a cigarette.

“Really, Cleo,” he says, getting out his good drinking glasses. He’s going to need a drink if they’re going to have this conversation, and he knows Cleo expects it. “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about it.”

“Oh, you’re a smart boy,” she puffs on her cigarette. “How long has this been going on?”

He turns his face away from Cleo. “Does it matter?”

“I suppose not,” she says thoughtfully. “Though, I don’t know how her ‘usband doesn’t know”

“Maybe he does,” Benny says gruffly.

Cleo’s next question surprises him. “Do you love her?” He expected questions about the when, where, and how, all the sordid details, but not this.

“What has that got to do with anything, Cleo? It’s about sex.” He clarifies. “And chess. Sex and chess.” With Beth, he can never quite tell them apart.

“Oh, you poor fool,” Cleo pouts. “I suppose for the two of you, it would be the same.”

He says icily, “It’s not love.”

And he believes it. He’s not _in love_ with Beth Harmon. Fascinated with her genius? Yes. Overcome with lust at the sight of her. Sure. Infatuated with her? Maybe. But in love with her? No.

Cleo pats his hand and says, “If you say so.”

-

As if a word like _love_ could ever describe what they have.

-

Benny will pretty much fuck her anywhere, any time. Hotel rooms. Bathrooms. Supply closets. The back of his Beetle. His apartment. A sacred site. He’s not picky. And neither is Beth.

The one thing he won’t do is fuck her when she’s drunk.

And it’s not for a lack of her trying. Often, when she’s drunk, she’ll stumble to his room with the intent of seduction. For all his attraction to her, though, it seems he can always resist her in this state, telling her to go get straightened out first.

Almost like he needs to know it’s _her_ he’s fucking.

-

“Harry left me,” she says. They’re at a tournament in Miami and they’re in various states of undress in Benny’s hotel room.

“Did he now? About time,” Benny says, almost disinterestedly as he pushes her skirt down. She steps out of it, unbuttoning his shirt, revealing his flat stomach, the silver chains resting on it.

She wants to hit him. She thinks about pushing him away but then he has a finger inside of her and he’s curling it just right and _fuck._

She grabs on tightly to his hair. “You could at least pretend to be sorry,” she whispers against him.

“Are you sorry?” he asks, lifting his head to meet her gaze.

“No.”

-

Harry had been nice about it. No fuss, no divorce. Just…separation.

He’d come downstairs one day, with a suitcase packed. He said he’d come back another time to get his other things.

Beth hadn’t been expecting it, exactly. But she also wasn’t surprised. She thinks that a part of her had always suspected this, since he proposed, since she’d started fucking Benny, since she’d started drinking again. Since the first time he’d left, all those years ago, when he’d warned her to be careful and laid the bottle of green pills on the desk.

She hadn’t fought it, though. She was already resigned to it by the time the words left his mouth.

He was talking about separation, how he didn’t intend to file for divorce (unless she wanted to), how he’d be going to live with a co-worker until he found his own place. His voice cracked, and Beth had looked at him then, and saw just how much she’d broken him.

She’d always been a heartbreaker.

“I can go,” she had said, even though the words pained her as they came out. Where she’d go to, she didn’t know. But she felt like she had to offer it up. Some small part of her. “You don’t have to go. I’ll leave.”

But Harry, kind Harry, had just shaken his head. “No, Beth, I could never do that to you.”

-

One time, she asks Benny why. She’s drunk and is slurring her words. She’s out in the hallway (a really terrible idea) in front of his hotel room, which he’d denied her entry to.

“Go take an aspirin and drink some water, Harmon,” he says, a cold edge to his voice.

“Why don’t you fuck me when I’m drunk?” she says.

“Why don’t I play losers?” he snaps. “It’s not worth it.”

She holds a hand up. “That’s not fair.”

“Life’s not fair, Harmon.”

“Is it because you don’t think it’s me inside?” she asks, her voice small. “When I’m drunk?”

“Because it is me,” she says. She points at herself, hand gesturing to her body, slightly wavering. “This is me, all of me, Benny. You want this genius? Well, this is the price of it,” she staggers, and Benny reaches out to catch her. She shakes him off.

“Easy, kid,” he says, his voice cautious.

“Don’t call me kid,” she says, attempting to stand on her own.

“Okay,” he agrees. “Easy there Harmon,”

She stumbles into his room.

“No one is ever going to love the real me,” she says sadly as she sits on the bed, looking intently at the vase of flowers on the night stand.

“No one is going to love this mess,” she says. “Everyone only wants me when I’m a winner. They don’t need me.”

And Benny wants to tell her that she’s wrong, that she’s drunk and she’s talking nonsense but her words poke at his chest and he can _feel_ them and it cracks his heart open and for a moment, he thinks that maybe she’s cracked his brain open and pulled his own thoughts from his head.

He doesn’t have a chance to say anything because then she starts crying and in all the years that they’ve known each other, this is _new,_ and he doesn’t know what to do, and she looks so small and vulnerable there (even though he know she’d tear him a new one just for thinking that). He doesn’t know what to do, so he doesn’t think, just lets his instinct take over. He goes and holds her. She folds herself into him, head on his chest.

They fall asleep like that.

-

In the morning, Beth wakes first, feeling the dried tears on her cheeks.

It’s the first time they’ve ever slept together without fucking.

She doesn’t linger, too many questions pound her head, too many unanswered “what ifs” that echo through her mind.

She leaves the room and doesn’t leave anything behind but the man in the bed.

They don’t talk about it again.

-

The Federation organizes a Harmon vs. Watts match and _Chess Review_ deems that it’ll be the domestic match of the decade.

It’s held in Los Angeles, and she flies in a few days early.

She expects him to come to her room, but he doesn’t. So she goes to his room.

A bare-chested Benny opens it.

A giggling woman comes from behind him to peek and she feels a stab in her chest.

 _No,_ she tells herself, _you’ve no right to feel that way Harmon._

-

Harry checks in on her every once in a while, every few months.

He comes to the house and Beth is sure while she’s not looking, he checks every nook and cranny to make sure she’s not hiding pills again.

She’s not, but she’s also sure he notices the garbage bins full of empty beer bottles outside as well.

-

Benny’s skimming the paper when he sees a piece, a short two-paragraph story in the back of the “International” section (it’s to his ever distress that chess news isn’t put under the Sports section). The headline, in print small enough that it can’t even really be called a headline, reads “World Champion Beth Harmon to Compete in Moscow.”

He dials the phone.

“Why didn’t you ask me to be your second?” Benny hisses through the phone.

There’s silence for a moment on the other end of the line. “How did you know I wasn’t going to?” a falsely sweet voice asks on the other end.

“You would have asked me by now,” he says flatly.

“I didn’t feel like it.” Benny can imagine her rolling her eyes at him right now. 

“You should have asked me,” Benny insists.

He doesn’t know why he’s even bothering to call. He doesn’t care, not really. One of the last things he wants to do right now is go to fucking Moscow in the cold like this. He has two tournaments coming up here and a poker game with a heavy buy-in that he places his odds as pretty good to win. But it’s the principle of the matter.

It had been a shock when he’d read it and he realized she hadn’t asked him to be her second. He’s been her second at every match that counted for so long now that the thought of not being there makes him feel _detached_.

“I’m going alone,” she says.

“Fine.” He hangs up. He doesn’t need to be anyone’s second, anyway.

-

She’s in an adjournment with Luchenko. She knows that Borgov and Girev and him are all in one of their rooms, going over each play meticulously.

She spends the first half of the evening plotting out all Luchenko’s potential plays, setting it up on the board and in her mind, writing it all out. It doesn’t help though. Her eyes keep darting to the phone, as if she’s waiting for it to ring.

Being here without Benny is disconcerting. She feels restless, like a part of her is detached from the her body and is oceans away. She’d tried a few shots of vodka, but it didn’t help. Before she knows it, she’s picking up the phone.

“Hello,” he says into the phone, picking up on the first ring.

“If he goes for the knight, what’s the move?” There are no need for introductions or greetings or small talk.

There is silence on the other end of the line.

“Bishop knight pawn,” he says, finally. “But you already knew that.”

“I did,” she admits.

“So why did you call?”

She tells the truth. Telling the truth is always so much easier when there’s a landline and an ocean between them. “I needed to think it out.”

“Okay, let’s think them all out,” he says. 

And so they do. They go over and over the moves.

It’s almost like going over the moves by herself. Like playing it out in her mind, only with another voice in her head. Sometimes, one of them will catch something a few seconds ahead of the other, but the other always arrives there quickly after.

She goes to sleep exhausted, but ready for the continuation the next day.

In the morning, she wonders if the phone call even actually happened.

-

“I can’t fucking believe you!” Beth crashes into his hotel room, a wind of red hair and pure fury.

He is in a state of half undress, preparing for bed. “To what do I owe this pleasure, Beth?”

“I can’t believe you’re helping Gordon!” She turns on him, pointing a finger at him wildly, swinging it back and forth. “You traitor!”

He’d known there was a chance something like this would happen, after she found out. After she found out that he had offered to help Gordon, the newest young US chess prodigy, in training for his upcoming match for Harmon.

He’d always admired the Russians for playing as a team, after all.

He thought she’d be miffed, annoyed.

But Beth, after all these years, can still surprise him. She is absolutely furious, her eyes shining in the face of the betrayal.

“Relax, Harmon,” he says. “It’s only for this week at the tournament. I’m not inviting him to my apartment or anything.”

She does not relax. “You knew I was anxious about it!” she continues yelling.

It’s true. Beth, who never lets on that she’s afraid of anything or anyone, had confessed to being just the slightest bit scared of this new player, Gordon. They’d been lying, sticky with sweat and the smell of sex around them, when she had turned to face him on her side and whispered her fear.

And then Benny had gone and offered to fucking help him. Well, technically, Benny thinks, he had said yes when Gordon asked him, but he doesn’t think Beth would appreciate the difference right now.

“Are you so afraid of being beat Harmon?” he asks. He doesn’t appreciate her fury at him, at her painting of him as a _traitor._ Not after Moscow. Not after everything.

She is still in fits. “You knew! You knew!” She is so angry and her cheeks are flushed red and if he didn’t know she was absolutely outraged right now, he would want to take her to bed.

It’s not that she’s angry about Benny helping Gordon (or not that angry, anyway. It’s not like she needs Benny to help her win). It’s that he did this in spite of (or maybe _because_ ) of what she told him. Used what she’d say into the pillow and ran with it, leaving her naked and exposed.

She would never do that to him. (At least she doesn’t think she would.)

Instead, he just pushes further. “Afraid that my training will push him over the top?”

She glares at him.

“I made you a winner. I’m sure I can make him one too,” Benny declares haughtily.

Now she stalks toward him, like a queen in ruthless pursuit of a king. She doesn’t yell, only speaks in a low, deadly voice. “You didn’t make me _anything,_ ” she says.

“We both know I _never_ needed you,” she spits, more furious than before, if possible.

This quiet is worse than the yelling.

He levels his eyes with hers. “Then why are you so mad I’m helping Gordon?” he asks.

Beth doesn’t flinch away. “I’m not. Anymore.” She steps back and smooths her palms against her skirt. “I don’t need you.”

“Of course you don’t. Because you don’t need anyone.” Benny’s mouth twists into a cruel smile. “But guess what Harmon?” he eggs her on.

“What?” she says. She is getting tired of this, she wants to leave, to flee.

“No one needs you either.” The corollary _no one loves you_ hangs in the air between them, unmoving, one more thing added to the pile that grows between them. 

It’s like a shot to her chest, like a devasting checkmate she didn’t see coming.

But Beth doesn’t know how to lose, not really. Not gracefully. She is all attack.

“ _Fuck you._ Fuck you, you narcissistic, egotistical maniac who thinks he’s god’s fucking gift to the Earth. Well, you’re not,” she snaps, her mind racing for ways to take his knife and drive it into his heart. “No one needs you either. Who would need a second-rate chess bum wannabe anyway?”

They both know they’ve gone too far. Have said things they can’t take back. Have tipped over their kings so far off the board that they don’t know how to get back. 

But when you strip back everything, maybe that’s what they are. Competitors. Predators. And that’s what predators do. They pounce on their prey. And in the game of chess, vulnerability is prey that stands still.

-

They don’t talk for six months after that.

Beth feels like a chess problem with no answer, no possible moves.

Benny feels like a chess set with half the pieces missing.

-

He shows up at her house in Lexington and parks his blue Beetle in front.  
  


“I’m sorry,” he gets out as soon as she opens the door.

She stares at him, looks at him up and down, even though he’s still the same, still wearing the same stupid cowboy hat and trench coat.

She should shove the door in his face and make him drive straight back to New York. She considers it.

But she is also tired. Tired of fighting (if that’s what they’re doing). Even if they’re not fighting, she is tired of fighting against what feels like an inevitability.

She sighs. “You better be.”

-

She makes them play chess before they can go to bed. 

It is a vicious, brutal match that ends in a draw and by then even though they are both exhausted, they are both so overwhelmed by lust and want that they don’t make it to the bedroom.

-

They fuck on Alma’s adored piano.

They empty the pieces onto the floor, leaving the board clear, digging into Beth’s back.

As she thrusts her hips up to meet his, pulls at his hair to bring his mouth closer to her, claws at his back, she doesn’t feel tired.

She feels alive. She feels whole.

She gives herself over to the darker side of herself and lets him push her over that ledge, singing an unholy tune as they come undone together.

(Maybe, in another life, Benny could be the best side of her and she could be the best side of him. Maybe, in another life, they could bring out the best in each other. Maybe).

As it happens, they are two parts of the same damaged, rusted coin.

-

Beth loses her first match (speed chess not withstanding) in years to Girev, who is steadily on the way to become World Champion.

At the airport, she changes her ticket last minute.

She knocks on the door of a cruddy basement apartment beneath a lovely brownstone, with a bottle of vodka in her hand.

They don’t talk.

They fuck on the dirty concrete floor.

Benny is kissing her, poised to enter her when she rolls them over, the suddenness and force of it surprising him. He gazes up at her and she is hovering over him, her eyes dark and dangerous.

She sinks down onto him and it is hard and fast and rough and soon enough, it’s too much for either of them and they are chasing each other into the satisfying darkness.

After, they are both absolutely ruined. Their clothes are scattered somewhere around the apartment. Their lips stink of vodka and each other. Beth’s lipstick is smudged. Benny’s back has a series of crescent marks. Their necks are war zones.

But they lie together, a tangle of limbs.

There is no need to say anything.

-

The next day they fuck before she has to go the airport.

He doesn’t drive her.

She promises to come back in a few weeks. To train.

-

They are like that. A constant queen trade. Coming and going and coming and going. They are a constant back and forth, always in motion, never going anywhere and going everywhere all the while. 

-

_And you know damn well_

_For you I would ruin myself_

_A million little times_

**Author's Note:**

> Um. So I'm so sorry. This basically started out as an excuse for me to practice writing smut for my colors au since I'm a little nervous about it. And what was supposed to be a bittersweet 2k fic turned into a toxic 11k fic that went off the rails. So yeah. 
> 
> If you've read this far, thanks for reading and I am so sorry.


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